FROSTBITEN (FROSTBITE)

Sweden, 2006, 98 minutes, Colour.
Petra Neilsen, Carl Ake Eriksson.
Directed by Anders Banke.

Vampires in Sweden, in the winter dark of Lapland (‘dawn is a month away’, chuckles one of the living dead)! Well, if they can be at home in Transylvania and in Whitby, why not in the Arctic circle?

This is a tongue in both cheeks blend of the serious and the comic. The dark prologue is a World War II battle in Ukraine where German soldiers encounter the vampires – suggesting as a symbol the consequences of Nazi eugenic experimentation. The main action is set in a contemporary small town where there is an institution with an expert on genetics. A doctor decides she wants to work there and drags her unwilling daughter along. The daughter finds the town boring – as do most of the teenagers who take to drugs for enjoyment. The drug addiction also has some symbolic suggestions for the director – an analogy for the insatiable blood addiction of the vampires.

Well, the town has some dire secrets – which do have a connection with the wartime opening – and the teenagers become the living dead. The poor police don’t know how to cope. The doctor undergoes some distress and more. The genetics expert is not what everyone thinks – and there is a twist at the end.

For those who follow the vampire genre this is a must with its Arctic variations – and vampires who owe more in their makeup and effects to Nosferatu than to Christopher Lee (whom the director acknowledges as an inspiration when he watched Hammer horror films on TV in his youth).